Yes. I never thought I'd hear this from John Boehner. About the oil, anyway. The sniping at Obama is pretty par for the course. Maybe now Pennsylvania will stop subsidizing its natural gas (even though it has a monopoly on the eastern seaboard) and put some money back into education?

-----So many valuable lessons learned. First: never use the New York Times because they will make articles inaccessible halfway through your post. Second: Oil tycoons become really concerned with the environment when faced with the possibility that someone other than they will get to take advantage of it. Third: We demand that President Obama be tough on socialists at home and abroad, some of the time.

This is a major turning point. I hope Raul "We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working" Castro uses this opportunity to get some payback for the last century of US-Cuban relations, which has consisted largely of America being a huge condescending asshole. They can sell their oil to China and it would be the sweetest Fuck You in the history of international relations.

Alternatively, Obama might follow in the footsteps of his esteemed predecessors McKinley, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower and once more "liberate" Cuba of its sovereignty. It would be the first time "environmental issues" were the stated reason for US imperialist-style intervention.

One of the most important events in the United States' history went unnoticed and uncelebrated last week. I of course speak of the CIA's coup that ousted Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh on August 19, 1953. Last year, Sam Sasan Shoamanesh of MIT wrote a fantastic in-depth look at the event and the implications it had on these two great countries. I recommend that everyone read it, but since it is rather long, I will post choice excerpts beneath the cut. It's still going to be a really long post, just so you've been warned.

I really hope you take the time to read the entire article. And then, if you're feeling adventurous, you may want to take a look at Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, which documents the event from a more personal perspective. Anyway, I hope you think of this story the next time you turn on the news and someone is talking about the evil, repressive nation of Iran.

Little more than a decade ago, few imagined that the oil industry would be drilling a mile below the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico. The vast technical challenges, the risks and the mind-boggling cost of the necessary offshore operations all appeared insurmountable. Yet what drove major companies like BP on to try and harvest these and other "difficult" new reserves was simple economics. It was the relentless rise in demand for crude oil. This demand pushed up the global oil price to levels where there was every incentive to overcome the obstacles and bring the oil ashore. ( Click for the full article )

SourceAs my conservative father astutely said a month ago, "This oil spill has made environmentalists out of us all." Will we see a greater public push for renewable energy sources in the following months? Now is certainly the time. Or wil lwe allow all further spill-related news to be relegated below the Next Great Tragedy on the evening news?